Great Western Coffee Shop

I had some time to consider this being stuck on a very slow, very short and therefore overcrowded train this morning.

I think that if FGW can honestly only run a 3 car, half hourly service between Reading and Paddington on a Sunday then they really need to re-think the timetable.. We left people behind at West Drayton, Hayes and Harlington, and Southall..  I imagine we weren't the only train to do so. That must be really frustrating.. Being on the train wasn't much better..

It surely has to be better to remove stops on the timetabled service rather than promising a service that people can't get on? I also travelled on a Sunday at a similar time earlier in the year so I know it's not caused by Christmas.. On the one earlier in the year we left people behind as early as Slough (and onwards)...

Thanks goodness today's train was a 165 with opening windows or I think they might have made a few people fell quite ill..

All Sunday Reading - Paddington stopping services should be formed of a least two units, no excuses. FGW really need to pull their finger out regarding this. It is totally unnacceptable to run 3 (sometimes 2) car sets on Sundays when there are lots of units sat around at Reading and Paddington. It's not as if you can't predict that on the Sunday before Christmas lots of people will want to go shopping! These are the sort of passengers that only use the railway rarely and will be put off further use by gross overcrowding.

And now that the platforms on the main lines have been lengthened there is no longer the excuse that they would have had yesterday for example when the relief's were shut from Slough.

The reason always given for a poor stopping service on Sundays is the timetabble is predicated on a two track railway. With teh engineers being able to work on two tracks whilst trains pass on the other two. This menas that provision has to be made for trains crossing on teh limited number of crossovers between Main and Relief, given as well tthat all of them except Dolphin Right from Down Main are single lead junctions more capcity is lost as trains cannot cross in parraell so more time for crossing move waitng for conflicitng moves. The other problem is most stopping trains are virtually all stations from Oxford so more likely to be delayed.

However as said given these constaints it should be incumbant on FGW to run 6 coach trains to compensate for lack of trains. Nobody minds a regular hlaf service provided there's room on teh train.

I've just looked up to see if Heathrow Connect runs on Sunday (5th Jan) and which it does so Hayes and Southall at least get other services.

But I was intrigued by one servcei that came up:

10:28    Hayes & Harlington [HAY]    London Paddington [PAD] Platform 6    10:54    26m    
1
   More Details on the 10:28 service from Hayes & Harlington to London Paddington    
   
Single Fare
^5.90

It's the red figure 1 that  intrigued me so I looked up the details. It turns out you catch a Heathrow Connect to Heathrow Terminal 2/3 and come back on the Heathrow Express to Padd. But look at th fare ^5.90 the same as Hayes Padd! is that right!

Plus it's only 2 minutes longer 26 vice 24 minutes than the following 10:45 FGW stopper.

Would you be able to change at Hayes from an overcrowed FGW servcie from further West and carry on via Heathrow? Or would you have to split tickets at Hayes? the only problem is that you seem to have a 29 minute wait at Hayes. it also seems to work coming back with a 22 minute wait.

But stopping services from Oxford are formed of 5 coaches on a Sunday.

They seem to be 3 coaches by the time they get beyond Reading  ;D

They certainly can be. Although even 5 carriages may be standing room only from Slough onwards some Sunday mornings. Three coaches on the faster services are often standing room only from Reading.

.....those of us who live in Taplow get no service at all on Sundays, despite massively increased demand in the area, a new supermarket being built next to the station and a load of new houses on the cards soon.

Population of Taplow is given as 1669 in the 2011 Census.

I suspect those outside of the area go to Burnham/Slough or Maidenhead to get the train instead?

Taplow is one of the least used stations on the GWML. Only Iver and Cholsey have lower patronage. Iver has no Sunday services either.

Previous discussion about Taplow on Sundays..

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1287

Taplow has the potential to have quite a large patronage on sunday particularly in Summer.

There is the notoriuos Boot Sale just opposite every Sunday from AMrch to September which clogs teh A$.

Then we have Tescos opening on teh old Bishop's Centre site.
next year

Then there's Taplow Court th Buddist centre which has quite large numbers attending on Sundays many of whom come by train and have to be picked up from Taplow.

Then there are ramblers who can use Taplow as a start or end point for a walk along the Jubilee River and the Around the Rowing Lake.

Finally last but not least tehre are number of shift workers who need a Sunday service to get to work.

The potential is there. We were always surprised when doing the flower bedsm. on a Sunday afternoon. how many people used to turn up expecting trains.

But a I said in my previous post we are stuck with the Sunday two track railway until at least 2016 and the start of the electric service.